Superior Realities Fifth Anniversary: My Favourite Posts

It has now been five years to the day since I launched Superior Realities. In that time, I’ve written hundreds of posts, deleted thousands of spam comments, and wasted the time of countless people with my horrible, awful, wrong opinions. And I guess I had some fun or something.

My rogue's original face, now restored to its former glory in the new modelsLast year, I celebrated by posting my top ten posts as determined by traffic. This year, I’ve decided to highlight my personal favourite posts. The scale of my narcissism is such that there’s too many to fit into a top ten list, but I tried to avoid going too overboard, and considering I’ve published just shy of six hundred and fifty posts at this point, I’d say I’ve narrowed things down pretty well.

If you started following this blog relatively recently, consider this a good highlight real and perhaps check out some of the earlier posts that you might have missed.

If you’ve followed me since the beginning, how have you put up with me this long?

And if you have any favourite posts that aren’t on the list, let me know what stood out for you.

Into the Mists: The Wandering Isle:

I liked the entire “Into the Mists” series, in which I reviewed each new zone in Mists of Pandaria as I played them, but linking every post seemed a bit much, so I figured I’d just start with the beginning.

My hunter on the Wandering IsleI really enjoyed writing this series, and it’s interesting to come back now and again to revisit my first impressions of Pandaria.

I neglected to do a similar series for Warlords of Draenor because, well, Draenor blows, but I think I’ll get back to the idea for Legion. I’m thinking of “Under the Burning Skies” as a title.

My trinity of posts on the trinity:

Not that I’m not proud of this series, but if I’m going to be honest, I’m mostly linking it because I poured a lot of effort into it and am a little bitter it didn’t get more attention.

I’ve never pretended not to be an attention whore.

Off Topic: A Plea for Sanity:

Discussing such serious topics on the Internet may not be wise, and drawing further attention to it perhaps even less so, but there were things in that post that needed to be said, for my own peace of mind if nothing else, and sadly the message is not any less relevant now than it was a few months ago.

I doubt my little blog can make any significant positive impact, but I had to try.

Why the Abramsverse Is True Trek, and Why I’m no Longer a Trekkie:

The cast of Star Trek: EnterpriseAh, the catharsis of the epic nerd rant. Frankly I’m almost a little disappointed I didn’t get more hate for this.

Raving About The Secret World, Part Two: The Thinking Man’s MMO:

I write so many posts lavishing praise on The Secret World that you’d think Funcom was paying me to do it. Alas, that would require them to actually spend some money on marketing.

Of them all, this post probably does the best job of encapsulating what makes TSW so special.

I apologize for the crumby screenshots. I was still using my old computer when I wrote this.

The Great Horde Bias Rant:

If there are two things you can always count on me to produce, they are giant Warcraft rants, and controversial opinions that very few people agree with. This post covers both nicely.

And I think I made my case very well.

TSW Anniversary: MegaJoel, Livestreaming, and SO MUCH XP:

WITNESS THE GLORYJust for the memories, really. This was probably the single best day I’ve had as a gamer. To this day, I’m still friends with Moiren, and I still smile whenever I think back on Joelzilla.

It’s a day I will probably never equal, at least as far as gaming goes.

My Love/Hate Relationship with RPGs:

I think it was interesting to analyze the core traits, good and bad, of the RPG genre, and why it has at times been both my most and least favourite game genre.

As an aside, that post was written almost three years ago, and my main in TSW is still using the same sword. Now that’s gearing done right.

Wyrmrest Accord Shows Its Pride:

I have to say that participating in a gay pride march in World of Warcraft remains one of my all-time favourite gaming memories.

It’s not a party until the Goblin drag queen riding a woolly mammoth shows up.

A gay pride flagMy Favourite Word:

Verisimilitude!

In Her Sister’s Pose:

As a rule, I don’t think I’m particularly good at short fiction, but this story turned out very well, I think, and I’m very proud of it.

My pair of posts on female armour in fantasy:

Another controversial opinion. If I had to do it all over, I may have been slightly more tactful and less judgmental in my initial post, but on the whole I still stand by all points made, no matter how unpopular they may be.

When in Doubt, Elves:

Because Elves, that’s why.

Odin Is the Writer’s God:

There’s a reason there’s a statuette of Odin sitting above my bed (along with Skadi, Athena, Lakshmi, and Buddha — I’m covering all my bases).

Art of Odin, the All-FatherGaming: The Love/Hate Developers:

This post was just a lot of fun to write. Criticism is good, but often it’s easy to get bogged down in the inevitable gripes and bitterness that come with the passion of fandom. It was good to remind myself why I’m so passionate in the first place.

Age of Mythology: Extended Edition and Tale of the Dragon Thoughts

Age of Mythology was a very important game in my youth. It took everything I loved about the excellent Age of Empires series and spiced things up with the addition of spectacularly powerful god powers and myth units. It spurred an interest in ancient mythologies (especially Norse mythology) that continues to this day.

The meteor god power in the Age of Mythology Extended EditionIt deserved to go on to become one of the great franchises of the real time strategy genre, but for whatever reason, it didn’t. It had one expansion, The Titans, and then vanished into obscurity, its vast potential largely wasted.

So I was happy to see Age of Mythology given a second lease on life when it rereleased on Steam as the “Extended Edition,” with updated graphics and full Steam support.

Admittedly, the new graphics don’t make a huge difference. The lighting is a bit more realistic, the water’s a little prettier, and I think the textures are a bit more detailed, but it’s not a major overhaul. The good news is AoM was a very good-looking game in its day, so it hasn’t aged as badly as it might have.

The Extended Edition also includes an extra mini-campaign called The Golden Gift. Apparently this was something Microsoft put out back in the day but which I somehow never knew about. An extra four Norse missions is certainly nice to have, though if I’m being honest it’s not an especially remarkable campaign.

Where things really got exciting was when it was announced there would be an all-new expansion to the Extended Edition: The Tale of the Dragon, featuring the Chinese as a new playable civilization.

A Chinese army in Age of Mythology: Tale of the DragonI bought Tale of the Dragon immediately upon release, though it took me a couple weeks to actually get around to playing it, having been distracted by other things.

The mysteries of the East:

Tale of the Dragon turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag, but on the whole, I’m happy with it.

First, the bad news.

The new campaign is, well, not that good. Age of Mythology was never a game with especially memorable storylines, but they were at least basically competent. The characters were memorable, if not deep, and the plots were coherent and engaging, if not particularly complex or thrilling.

Tale of the Dragon’s story, though, is clearly the work of amateurs. There are significant parts of it that just flat-out don’t make sense, and otherwise it’s just shallow and uninteresting in the extreme.

It also has issues with polish. There are some significant bugs, and the difficulty tuning is very inconsistent, effortlessly easy one moment and brutally punishing the next.

A Chinese town in Age of Mythology: Tale of the DragonThat said, the mission design is pretty strong, with a good amount of variety. Even with the story issues, it could have been a good campaign with better quality control.

The good news, however, is that the new Chinese civilization is excellent. It carries the otherwise meh campaign and is great fun in skirmishes (and presumably multiplayer, though I haven’t had the courage to attempt that).

The Chinese aren’t wildly different from previous civilizations, but they have enough new ideas and interesting quirks to feel fresh. A lot of their units break the game’s usual rock/paper/scissors rules. For example, their main cavalry unit, the cataphract, counters infantry. Usually, infantry are the counter to cavalry in AoM.

Their myth units and god powers are also for the most part very fun and interesting. I think it’s a good sign that I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time agonizing over what gods to worship because they’re all so appealing.

Also, the Chinese can unleash giant magical monkeys on their enemies.

Giant magic monkeys.

Monkeys!It’s a small thing, but something else I really like about the Chinese is how pretty their towns are. The new developers managed to get some pretty good results out of the game’s creaky old graphics engine. The Chinese buildings are very detailed and just nice to look at.

I generally hold up Blizzard games as the apex of real time strategy, but one thing StarCraft and Warcarft have never captured is the simple pleasure of building and maintaining your own little city. The Age of _____ games have always done a very good job of that, and it’s more true than ever with how aesthetically pleasing the Chinese villages are.

So even with its hiccups, I would definitely recommend Tale of the Dragon to any Age of Mythology fans.

And if you’re not already a fan, pick up the Extended Edition and remedy that situation immediately.